PowerColor HD 7850 PCS+ Review - PAGE 12

Total War: Shogun 2 is a game that creates a unique gameplay experience by combining both real-time and turn-based strategy. The game is set in 16th-century feudal Japan and gives the player control of a warlord battling various rival factions. Total War: Shogun 2 is the first in the series to feature DX11 technologies to enhance the look of the game, but with massive on-screen battles it can stress even the highest-end graphics cards.

We round things out with the PowerColor PCS+ being 10% faster than the base model in Shogun 2, and about even with the GTX 570. In the majority of our benchmarks, the PowerColor model was either 10% faster (or higher) than the cards using the default 860MHz clock. That's actually quite good for a factory overclocked graphics card.

Unfortunately the higher clock speeds are once again not enough for the HD 7850 to be able to game at 5760x1080, so if you are planning on gaming above 1080p, a stronger graphics card would be recommended.

On topic, owned the card, satisfied with it. It was either this or Sapphire, got this in the end. Was surprised at the temperature because there was only one fan and the max temperature i got was 67° at 100% GPU load. I agree with the article's writer, simply the best bang for buck graphic card out there.

I just yesterday purchased the Sapphire 7850 OC Edition from New Egg ( It's finally back in stock and it even comes with a free coupon of DIRT Showdown, which isn't even out yet ). Obviously I can't give any of my personal results with temperature and FPS during various games, as I haven't even touched the thing yet ( still seems to be in California, good luck getting it to Florida in 3 days UPS! ).

The fact the Sapphire versions are smaller than the reference model is an incredibly awesome plus for me as my case is rather small. Also I'd imagine it'd stay cooler than the PowerColor version because it has two fans, and a unique heat sink set up. I'll give my results when it's in my computer and playing games ( probably in 4-6 days ).